Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 78-minute session, Venerable Jamyang presents a comprehensive review of Buddhist mind-healing teachings, moving from foundational concepts—what is healing, what we seek in happiness—through karma and purification to the advanced insight that the sense of a separate self is a mental construction. He grounds abstract doctrine with personal anecdotes of grief and loss, then engages students directly on guilt and self-care, particularly addressing women conditioned to sacrifice themselves for others’ happiness. Main topics: healing as wholeness; wrong views that distort reality (permanence, body-identification, misunderstanding karma); karma in detail (imprints, ripening as rebirth, experience, tendency, or environmental result; four opponent powers for purification); and the false self as suffering’s root. The teaching bridges Buddhist doctrine and Western psychology, offering practical tools for students seeking deeper practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2007 12 11 jamyang – session 1 111207.mp3
UUID: fa470c06-129b-4e6b-86f1-bbfa88a47b72
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2007-12-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 78.3 minutes
Words: ~11,398
So they’re gonna just, like, come in. Give me a shot. Till? Till we do morning tea. Then?
And then I’ll probably know you. Oh, no. How can you do that? I don’t think they’ll sit for me. Let them come in.
K? Let them come in. Well, let me see. Okay. Good.
I’ll send them shopping. Don’t know. You’re probably Yeah. They might come. K?
Maybe it’s a good introduction for them. You know? Maybe it’s actually they can make a nice connection. Yeah. Let’s see what happens.
Yeah. Okay. How is that? What is that? Dope?
That’s the only possible You’re Dutch. You should know that. Dope. Come on. You’re from Poland.
I thought I don’t hear this right. I don’t I thought, what is she talking about? So, you know, every Dutch person smokes dope. You know that? Mhmm.
That was not really interesting. I think I smoked it, I don’t know, maybe three times. And I thought, what’s that? What’s that? It doesn’t do anything.
You know? If I just sit down and close my eyes and I experience much more bliss than I ever experienced with smoking. But may I thought that maybe I’m not doing it right. You know what mean? So I tried to do more and I just get dizzy and I just wanna pass out.
And it’s like, what’s that? It’s horrible. You lose complete control. That’s what I feel felt like. Yeah.
It’s not doing it for me. And everybody sits together. It’s cool, man. And so you have to do, like, the same. I don’t know.
Is that what happens? I can do is no one else knows what the hell is going on. What? They have to stick together because no one else knows what’s going on. You know, like, they can just sit there and plan wonderful things together.
But I I even if I was in a group and I smoked with them, I never got that. Yeah. Oh, I see. One friend of mine, he thought this was the ultimate, having a beer and then having dope and then listening to music and then I’m not sure what was gonna happen after that, but Thank you. Didn’t do it for me.
And he just started laughing and doing weird things. I thought, what’s that? Son. And we did it together, it’s like it’s like I don’t know. It’s something very, very strange to my mind.
Because she didn’t wanna do it. So this is your sons. I have to pretend that I My oldest son is that does the right thing. So, ideally, we shouldn’t go, man, when he makes it. He’s not.
You have to wait till next year to say, hey, man. How is everybody? Kevin’s been sick, and I don’t think I slept for about seven months. Oh, wow. Slightly.
What’s wrong with him? He’s had this cough that just keeps him up more. Oh, and you too? Yeah. That’s a good thing.
And you just got you just got through your week. I’m still hanging on. Yeah. I’m fine. Yeah.
Sometimes life shakes everything, isn’t it? Yeah. So much that it’s like everything falls apart. There is actually a book from Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart, which describes that whole situation where things suddenly are completely so different that all the beliefs that you had before, you can’t hold on to them anymore because and it can be very scary or very confusing or very you know, you can just let it happen, but your whole world will change, isn’t it? Your whole life will change.
And letting it happen and just thinking, you know, it’s it’s for a reason. You know? It’s a new start. Mhmm. I just bought this one, actually.
Oh, yeah. I thought I’d give it to Aaron. Yeah. Christmas. That’s in the same in the same there are a few that look similar.
One is she’s very accessible writer, you know, one of the very few. Yeah. She’s from a different tradition, they’re very focused on staying in the moment, doing the mindfulness, and then practicing love and kindness for yourself, which we many times step over. She gives a lot of emphasis on that because she sees how we western us. We want to be the perfect people and that’s why we do the mindfulness.
Not because we want to accept ourselves but because we want to be more perfect. She describes yeah. But there is in that is like a sense of I’m not good enough. And with your meditation you support that sense. I’m not good enough.
Hello. Oh Helena. I was thinking I missed somebody but it’s Helena. So doing meditation because you don’t feel good enough the way you are, that’s actually an aggression. It’s a deep aggression towards yourself.
Good morning. That’s okay. We just started. We were late too. Thanks for that.
Sorry? Yeah, that’s alright. So she’s very good in that. Because I think we all have maybe that sense somewhere, you know, where you do therapy because you wanna improve something. But in that, there is somewhere a subtle attitude of aggression towards yourself.
So you have to be very careful if you step into things like that, therapy, meditation, that you find a way where you don’t do that or where where you don’t reinforce the tendency. Yeah. I wish you so. Yeah. Okay.
Hi. Hi. You alright? Something’s good, something not so good. Just so I’ve gone through all this week.
You wanna hold on your chair and we just go through the last twelve weeks? Is that okay? So I’ll I’ll go through whatever we have done. Just to as a reminder, if you feel like, oh, did we talk about that? I can’t remember.
Maybe just listen. I don’t know. I can always go deeper into things if we have enough time, but I do like to to go through the whole thing. Yeah. The reason why we the first first of all, we went into what is healing?
Do we wanna do healing? What does it mean? And healing has to do if we think about healing, it has to do with the experience of wholeness, with the feeling that we are good the way we are, with the feeling that we are complete, with the feeling that everything runs smoothly the way it should run or the way we have the feeling that it should run or can run. So when we’re looking for healing, that implies somehow we don’t feel like like that. Somehow we don’t feel whole or we don’t feel complete or we don’t feel satisfaction or we don’t feel contentment or we do have the feeling something is missing or even disease.
Comes from that. It is a disease, something is not really at ease in our body. So the fact that we’re looking for healing means that somehow we have not found that place in our mind where we can experience the wholeness, experience that we are good the way we are. Maybe we have that in moments in our life but somehow we don’t experience that twenty four hours a day and somehow we experience that enough to look for more or for better. Then from there we went like, okay then, what is it that we are looking for?
We are looking for happiness. We are looking for freedom from suffering. Happiness is more than just the happiness from the moment, the excitement of the moment. Happiness is more a stable condition, I think. We know how to find happiness that is very short term, you know, very, you know, the the the the few minutes happiness of whatever sense, how to say, satisfaction that we have.
We know that. But somehow we also know that that is not real happiness. Although we still use that tool to find that happiness, we know deep inside that’s not the real happiness I’m looking for. We’re looking for a more stable happiness, a more lasting a more peaceful state. If you really look at the temporary happiness that we get from eating something nice or doing something nice, that’s a short term, more excitement happiness.
It’s like your mind gets up and that feels like happy. It’s not that your mind becomes peaceful. What you’re really looking for is for peaceful happiness or contentment or joy that is there no matter what happens in your life. That is free from all the influences that we normally experience from daily life. Someone once said it to me this way: when we use the word happiness, it’s like if you if you remember, it’s based on happenings.
Happiness comes from happenings, like, more something that happens to you Yeah. As opposed to, like, joy, using the word like joy. Robina said what we think is happiness. When we think of happiness we think of the moments that we get what we want. Unhappiness is when we get what we don’t want or when we don’t get what we want, then we feel unhappy.
But if you really look into it, that is not what we are looking for. That happiness is not. But if I am very content in my life, I also say I’m happy. I have a happy life. But that’s a different happiness than the happiness that we use on a daily level, on the daily events.
So first of all we have to look like where do we find that happiness? We don’t find happiness by just continually satisfying our sense organs. Although that gives us temporary pleasure and although we do need it in life to feel that we have a good life, that’s not what is going to give the happiness. So the happiness doesn’t happen in our sense consciousness. In Buddhism we distinguish five sense consciousnesses connected to the eyes, the ears, the nose, the taste and the touch.
And then we have a mental consciousness. What we are looking for is the happiness on the mental level. So, if you wanna look for happiness on a mental level and I’ll just I’ll just say it how it in Buddhism because otherwise it might get all too long. You have this in Buddhism they say the nature of the mind is actually perfect happiness. It’s the nature of the mind.
We already have that inside but we just can’t somehow can’t access that. The nature of the mind is perfect happiness, is love, is compassion. That is like a very peaceful state. Then on top of that we have the delusions. The delusions are like a veil in our mental continuum.
That veil prevents us from really seeing the nature of our own mind. That veil, the delusions, let us believe that we have this veil and that veil lets us believe that there is a me and there are others. We have this feeling of me and that me can be happy, can be unhappy that ‘me’ can be benefited or cannot be benefited. Because I have that feeling of ‘me’ and because I have feelings arising that tell me I’m happy, I’m not happy, we react to things as I like this or I don’t like this, I want more of this or I don’t want more of this. That veil gives us the experience of I like this, I don’t like this.
I like this, I don’t like that. So, Buddhism says the real happiness is when we get rid of that whole veil. The happiness is already there. This veil where we do have experiences of happiness, where we also have a lot of experience of suffering that is all part of the whole veil. That has to be completely abandoned.
That is what we’re striving for. So we’re not striving to get only the peaks and stay up there. Right? We also don’t want to have the peaks. Not these peaks.
We want to have this. We want to have what is behind because what is there is already perfect. Can we see that? That is very, very important. So first of all, what Buddhism does is they explain a lot about what is the veil and what is actually behind the veil.
So you have a lot of teachings about what is the veil, how is it made up, why is it made up the way it is made up, Why it looks the way it looks? And how does it look behind it? The more knowledge you get about both, the more you know when something arises in your mind. Oh, this is part of that. I’m not going to reinforce develop that.
I’m not going to train that. Oh, that has to do with that. That’s good. I’m going to focus on that. In order to get here, a scientist veil is made in a certain way.
That veil does not really connect or has anything to do with that. This is actually so distorted that it makes it very difficult to even penetrate this. For instance, one of the distorted things that we have is that we somehow believe that things are permanent. Maybe not on an intellectual level, but on an emotional level definitely. Things are permanent for us which is not in accord with how things really are.
So when things fall apart our car, our house, whatever, we don’t get it. How is that possible? My house burned down. You know? What’s the nature?
It’s the nature of fire to burn and your house is an impermanent thing. Of course, your house can burn down. Right? If we would know that our house can burn down and we somehow we train our mind and that it can happen any moment, the moment it happens, we know it’s gonna happen one day, you know? So it’s not that big a shock.
Impermanence is one thing. Another thing according to Buddhism is that somehow we believe that things just happen to us. We don’t know why things happen. Things just happen. We don’t see really reason why our husband leaves us or why somebody crashes in our car or why the wind blows off the roof of our house.
We don’t know why it happens, it just happens to me bad luck or why good things happen to us wow, good luck! But we don’t know. So that not knowing makes that we’re constantly surprised by whatever arises in our life. The more we know about karma, the more that veil gets the same as reality, the less we get shocked when things happen. The more we feel that’s just the nature of how we are, how we exist.
Another thing that we believe in is that we don’t realise the nature of the mind in the sense that although you might believe in reincarnation, somehow we have the feeling that as soon as this body dies, I I die. Right? If you think about it, we can go into space and say, I am not I’m not dying. I know it’s just my body. But the moment we’re gonna die, we feel I’m gonna die because we have a very strong identification with the body.
And because we have that strong identification with the body we feel it’s me who’s going to die which is not in accord with reality which makes it a very shocking experience. So every time when we experience something and we don’t have the knowledge, the insight that that is actually the nature of reality, we get in a shock and we suffer. The more our views are not in connection with reality, the more we are in a shock, the deeper our suffering is, our mental suffering. So to change our suffering, we have to look at that view. So how do things really exist?
Buddhism is a lot about that. How do things really exist? Not to put onto you a kind of doctrine like this is what you have to believe’ but as a tool to lessen your suffering when things happen in your life. Right? You don’t serve anybody to think the way the Buddha thought except yourself.
Right? You don’t have to think like that because the Buddha loves you more or whoever loves you more or you are a better person you don’t have to do it for that. It’s just a tool for you so that you have a kind of frame in your mind, in your intellect that can help you to lessen your mental suffering. That’s the only reason why Buddhism is there. If you find another tool in another religion that gives you less suffering than the tools from Buddhism, I would advise you to take the other tools.
Right? Because the whole purpose of following that philosophy is that you experience less suffering in your life. That’s why the Buddha also says don’t accept it the way we say it. Don’t just accept it. Think about it.
Think about it. Because the only way how it works is if you really feel it is like that. Right? If I really feel that things are impermanent and suffering comes in my way, I can use that to work through my suffering. If I don’t really believe things are impermanent, it’s not going to help.
Isn’t it? If I believe somehow that there is a big God who is doing things with me and He has a reason for that and I trust him in that, you know, if that helps me to get through my suffering, I accept that concept to help me through the suffering. Yeah. So that’s the only reason why Buddhism exists. It’s just a concept that helps us to get beyond that veil.
It is a concept that helps us to reorganise the veil that we already have in order to get beyond it. As soon as we are beyond it, Buddhism says chuck it out. You don’t need it anymore. It’s just like a boat that takes you there. It’s not about a boat, it’s about getting to the other side.
That other side is not specific for Buddhism. That other side is just another state of our mind that is very difficult for us to access because we have that veil. Right? So Buddhism is only saying you have inside a potential to develop a state of mind where you can go to, where you’re completely free of suffering. But because you are living in a certain state of ignorance, in a certain state where delusions constantly arise in your mind, where you get fooled by your own thinking, your own views, own deep beliefs, your own innate instincts, you never get there.
You can’t get there. So in order to get there you have to train. You have to listen to things. You have to change your mind. You have to change the structure of your whole thinking.
The more you change the structure of your thinking, the more light from here maybe can shine through that. The more you can lessen this, you know, the more thin it’s gonna be, the more what is behind it can shine through it. Till eventually you make it so your mind this becomes so I’d say it feels like your mind becomes strong, but it’s not true. This mind becomes more in accord with that. This mind becomes more thin.
And then in a certain way you can penetrate it. As soon as you penetrate it, this is going to take over. This is your own innate wisdom. This is your own pure nature. Right?
That is the only reason why we listen to teachings in order to get there. Not because we want to believe that that is it. If you listen to the teachings and you think this is really true, you miss the whole point. You become a fundamentalist. Buddhism says this and this and this this and in the meantime you use it to harm others.
You’re a fundamentalist. It’s not about that. There is not a truth on an intellectual level that is really true. All the truth that we hear in every religion but also on on on just in the day to day things. Truth are only there because we recognize something as true because somehow we feel what is behind it.
That is the truth, not what is here. This is just the access to the truth, like a boat. Yeah? You get that? Good.
So that’s what Buddhism is about. And then, so we try to think about we talked about the potential of the mind. That the potential of the mind is pure and clear and knowing. It is made out of When we would experience that, we feel unconditional love for all sentient beings that doesn’t discriminate, that doesn’t make a difference between who I like and who I don’t like. We’re just completely in dependence on anything that appears in front of us.
That is the potential that we have. That is a limitless potential. Limitless. We can pervade everything with it. So, they say when we see that, we understand everything.
We understand every detail in the universe. We can help each and every sentient being in the universe in the way that is perfect for that way that is perfect for being. We have limitless potential to do that. If that is how it can be then we look like what is actually happening here. There is this whole structure of wrong views.
Where are going to look at the views? We looked at the view of permanence that we have. We looked at the view that we believe somehow we identify with the body. We looked we at the beginningless mind. Although the body has a beginning and an end, the mind has no beginning and no end.
The fact that the mind has no beginning and end means that part of us will move on to next life. That means that whatever we experience now, that’s not the end of something. That means that although we might experience suffering in this life, that doesn’t mean we won’t experience happiness in the next life. That doesn’t mean that if we are very happy in this life, it doesn’t guarantee that we experience happiness in next life. Thinking about that we might have a next life can make us more aware of oh, maybe something has a consequence of what I’m doing.
So then we looked into karma and how karma works. Imprints are placed in our mind and when the right conditions appear in the future, these imprints will ripen into whatever we created. Virtuous actions lead to happiness. Virtuous actions are those actions that benefit ourselves and others. Non virtuous actions, these are harmful actions towards ourselves and others, they lead to unhappiness in the future.
Some actions are The more powerful the action is, the more powerful the consequence is going to be. Looked into the whole let me have a look where I said there was something about karma. Looked into that that karma leads to happiness unhappiness. So karma leads to feelings in the future. Any feeling that we experience today is coming from actions that we have created in the past.
So then we talked about that actions can ripen into a certain type of rebirth. The fact that we have a human rebirth means that we have created a lot of virtuous activity in the past. A human rebirth, a higher rebirth comes from practicing ethics. So somehow we have practiced a lot of morality in order to get a human rebirth. karma can also ripen in that you get the experience which is similar than the cause.
So for instance, if I give Mary one hundred thousand dollars and I give that with a very open and generous heart and with a very positive motivation, that will lead in the future that I will experience wealth. If I harm Mary, then definitely in the future that will lead to my own suffering. Is similar than what I did to her. So if I kill her, I will experience being killed in the future. Then my karma ripens to an experience which is similar to what I did to others or to myself.
karma can ripen as a kind of tendency that we have. If I kill Mary, I create a potential in my own mind to kill. I create an ability to be able to kill. So that means that the next time it’s easier to kill. If you listen to people who kill others, the first time is very, very, very difficult.
But the second time is not that hard because somehow you have the experience. That’s what they tell you. We know it with good things too. Sometimes it’s really difficult to do a good action. But if you have done it one time, you have to put the energy in it to do it one time, the second time is easier.
So our mind has the habit or our mind has the potential to get used to anything. So anything that we are doing creates a kind of how to say create something in our mind so that next time it’s easier for us to do the same thing. Positive and negative both. So another karma that can ripen is that it becomes a karma that ripens as an environmental result. So if I harm Mary, that can ripen in a karma for me that in the future I will not be able to find the right medicine to heal my disease.
Or I will not find the food that is really nourishing. I might find food but it’s not doing anything to my body. Or I might develop a disease that there is no cure. Or I don’t find the right doctor? How many times do we look for doctors who can tell me what I have?
Sometimes you meet him, there he is. Straight away. That is karma. If you find it easy or if you find it difficult. That’s karma.
The more good merit we have, the easier these things will come to us. People might think you have a lucky life, you have a meritorious life, lots of merit to support you in sustaining your life. So, if we do an action that leaves an imprint in our mind and then in the future somewhere that imprint will ripen, if the right conditions appear into an experience. Positive experience, negative experience. karma is definite, which means that if we do an action, definitely the result will come.
karma is in accord with the cause. The result is in accord with the cause. So if you generate a positive action, you definitely will experience happiness. If you generate a negative action, you definitely will experience suffering. If I do a good action, it’s not possible that I experience suffering from that.
If I do a good action and experience suffering at the same time, I should wonder what is really my motivation to do that action. Maybe it’s not that pure as I thought it was. Maybe there was a hidden agenda in that. karma also magnifies. So if I do a small action today, that leaves an imprint in my mind and then with time the result of that will grow positive and negative.
A very small positive action with a really good motivation can grow to something really big in the future. A small negative action with a really bad motivation can also grow to something very negative in the future. And karma does not cease in the sense that whatever you have created is planted into your mind. And if you don’t do anything about it, it’s not going to cease by itself. There is not a God who can suddenly change that, take it away.
What you have planted, all the seeds that you have planted will be definitely there. Sometimes we might realise Oh, I actually have planted lots of seeds that are not so beneficial for me and I can see that it’s going to ripen as something negative for myself in the future. I want to do something about it. In Buddhism they say, or in this kind of Buddhism they say any seed that you have planted that you’re not happy with, you can purify that. If you start to purify it, it’s not saying it you never know if you have purified everything so you better purify a lot.
What you want to purify is in there. We talked about purification practice. You want to do purification practice, you need the four opponent powers. First of all, you have to make sure that you know the action. What is the action that I want to purify?
If you don’t recognise an action as something negative, it’s very difficult to purify it. Because part of your mind is still believing it’s good. So you need your wisdom. You need to develop your wisdom in order to recognize what is good and what is not good. True?
Then you need to acknowledge that you have done it, which is very difficult for us. We all believe we somehow, maybe deep inside, we don’t believe we’re good people. But more on the surface, we do believe we’re good people. We don’t wanna hear we do something wrong. We do something negative.
Are in denial about that part of ourselves, isn’t it? So, first of all, we have to recognize that we have the tendency deny our negative actions. And then we somehow have to find the courage to face that and acknowledge and say: Yes, I have done that. Only when we can say: I have done that. After that you can start purifying.
If you don’t make that step, you can do purifying practices, doesn’t matter how many, it’s not going to have the effect. Only when you really feel it. I did that and that is not right. You know, I’ve been harming somebody, either myself or others. Only when you really feel it, the purification will have the result.
So when you really feel and can acknowledge that you have done that negative action, then you first of all generate regret. Normally, you acknowledge it, the regret comes with that, isn’t it? If you really see the harm that you have done, the regret is with that in it. That comes I I feel. I don’t know.
That comes many times together. So first of all, you have to regret the action. And then you you take refuge and refuge in your own potential of purity, of ultimate wisdom, of ultimate compassion, which is symbolized by Guru or which is symbolised by Buddha or which is symbolised by whoever that symbolises for you, you generate a bodhicitta mind. You generate a mind where you dedicate your actions towards the happiness of others. We create negative actions out of a selfish or self centered mind.
Out of I want happiness and I want to be free from suffering. That is the reason why we create negative actions. Nothing else than that. So when we wanna purify that, we try to generate the opposite. We try to say, I’m not gonna worry about my happiness.
I’m gonna think about that whatever I’m doing is gonna be beneficial for everybody. That everybody includes myself. But if I cannot be included, the happiness of others is more important than my happiness. You do that with coming from a from a a place of wisdom, not from a place of guilt. That’s a little bit the difference between the Christian background and Buddhism.
If you know that your action for the benefit of seven people is going to lead to more happiness for yourself in the future than if you would do that action only for yourself. You do it with wisdom. You do it because you want to experience happiness. But you do it with a wisdom eye. You do that with with a longer term motivation behind it.
Can you see it? If I have to choose between your happiness happiness and I choose for my happiness, you all go Oh, what did she do? Baa ba ba I have a problem. Isn’t it? If I can let that go, even if that craving is very strong, I can let it go, you all feel happy.
How fantastic! And you come back next time. I’m happy. Very simple, isn’t it? But somehow, we get caught up in my happiness.
If we are in a group and if we are with family and friends that we know, we are more prepared to give up our own happiness because we know how beneficial it is for us. Buddhism says extend your circle, make it bigger because the same principle small group happens in the big group too. So even that stranger that you meet on the street, even that person who has harmed you, the same principle applies. The moment you can benefit that other person, that other person is also gonna benefit you. And even if that person doesn’t benefit you, in the future you definitely will experience happiness from the fact that you give up that momentary happiness for yourself now.
So you generate regret, you try to develop the bodhicitta mind, you try to bring your mind in a state of refuge where you recognize that ultimate nature of the mind as your potential and what you would like to achieve. And then you do a kind of purifying action. You do a good deed. And then in that good deed you try to make a good deed that is really, really powerful. So Buddhism gives advice in that.
And a certain mantras, if you say them, they’re really, really powerful. That is coming from experience for many people. You have to try for yourself if it works for you. So I handed out the Vajrasattva mantra that you could try to do they say if you do that every day twenty one times, the karma of that you have created that day, the negative karma, will not ripen further, will not become bigger. It stops right there.
So but you have to try if that works for you. Another thing you can do is reading reading Buddhist texts, saying other kinds of mantras, doing other kinds of prayers. Think this is coming purely for me. The Buddha. You can also say, you know, I realized that I harmed that person with a handicap.
What I’m gonna do to purify that, I’m gonna help people with a handicap. And you make something for yourself. Maybe you offer service to a place where you’re not at a handicapped. Care people come and say, I wanna work here. I have three months of time.
I’m gonna I would like to work here two hours a week to help these people. And then you try to make more connection with these people, try to understand better where they’re coming from, and you use it in that way. I think that works too. But how you know, I would I cannot say that works better than Buddhism because just because of my uniform. Yeah.
If we really understand karma, we can stop blaming others. Our normal reaction is if something happens, we either blame the other or we blame ourselves. We never see the big picture and we never see that, you know, me or others, it doesn’t really matter. Somehow, I created the causes for that and if others do it to me or I do it to myself, it doesn’t really matter. Right?
But the blame, what helps is that we stop blame. We stop the beating up. We drop the stick that we always carry with us. And we take responsibility not only for what happens to us today but also for the actions that we’re doing to create a karma for tomorrow. Two things: if things happen to us, we can say I must have created the causes somewhere for that.
I must have done that. It took me a long time to really get there. This denial of ‘yeah but I haven’t done that’ or no I can’t’ to really say ‘I must have done that’. Powerful. So at a certain point I brought my mind to a state that I everything that somebody did to me that was like what?
I would think I must have done the same to that person. I must have done the same. Which makes that what? Have I done that? Oh, you know.
And then you really look into it and you feel the suffering and you think oh, I have done that to somebody else. That’s the only reason why I experienced that. Oh, I don’t want to do that, you know. So then I would purify that and try to move away from that tendency. Works very powerful, very quick.
Anything that happens to you, I must have done that. You look into your mind and you just want to get rid of it because you see the pollution, you see the negativity that is there. Also, when you really see that, not only do you stop blaming others for what happens to you but you’re also very careful with the actions that you create from thereon. If you realize the suffering that comes from actions and that you have the potential to do that because you’ve you you experience the result from it, you become very careful in any action that you You become more aware of others. How do I do my actions so that I don’t harm others?
We are so obsessed it’s so easy to harm others. We’re not even aware, I think, most of the harm that we do. We’re not even aware. And you can see how we’re not aware by listening to all the that goes on. You know what this person said?
You know? There you can see how easy it is to harm on us without even knowing what we’re doing. So if we want to stop, if we take that responsibility, then we’re also going to say, Okay, I don’t want to harm others and I don’t want to harm myself. How do I do that? And Buddhism says, you stop creating negative actions.
So we looked into what is a negative action. And we talked about the killing, the stealing, the sexual misconduct, the lying, the divisive speech, the harsh words, the gossip, the ill will, the closed-mindedness, the covetousness and the wrong view These actions are the basis for harm that we inflict on others and harm that we inflict on ourselves. So if you want to take care of yourself in a healthy way, first thing you say is I stop doing these actions. The easiest is to stop with the actions of your body: the killing, the stealing, the sexual misconduct. If your mind gets used to that and you feel that you have trained your mind in that, we have to train our mind in that.
It’s not you can say from today or tomorrow I’ll take all the vows and I’m never ever going do any negative action. We can’t do that. We go mad. I have seen monks and nuns going mad because of that. We have to train.
We have trained our mind for a long period of time in creating activities. We have to train our mind if we want to change that. We also don’t go from day one, seven times a week to the gym and we work two hours a day. We can’t do that. We know our body can’t do that.
Slowly, slowly we build it up. And the stronger the body gets, the more you can really train. So you first stop with and maybe you stop with one action: I stop killing. You’re only going to observe where you kill in life. Where does killing happen?
Where are you involved and how can you prevent that? Look for ways how to stop doing that. If that goes well then you go to the next. If you have done all the actions of your body then you go to the actions of your speech. You start checking that.
Speech is a very difficult one. Because as soon as we feel unhappy, we want to work It’s hard to keep it in, isn’t it? It’s suffering. Sorry. Then if we are very good in that, then you can that removing things from your mind is not that difficult anymore.
Doing these things also helps you to get an idea about what is mind actually. Because mind is something that we can’t see, we can’t feel, we can’t really access it. We can only access it through our own experiences, our thinking, through our own contemplation. So when you start refraining from negative actions, you actually get more insight. And how does the mind work?
If you stop killing, you will experience the result quite soon after you stop doing that. And you will see it and you think, wow, this is how the mind works. And you first do it on a more coarse level. Then when you stop doing the speech, you’re going to see how the mind works and that you get more connection with the more subtle level of consciousness. Then the mind is even more subtle.
So the more you do that, the more insight you get in how the mind works. The more you get insight in this you know, your frame gets more connected to the real the reality itself. The more you get a feel of what is actually behind that and how this works, you know, and you can you can fine tune this really, really precise. So the the the more subtle you go, the more this gets fine tuned. So that helps to develop your wisdom while you do that.
Really understanding karma also makes that we somehow I’ll come to that later. karma. If you learn about karma, if you know about karma, you get this feeling that are, you know, although we might think I have free will, actually, we don’t have that much free will. We are living completely under the influence of karma and delusions. If I think I want that and I can just walk there and get it, I think I have free will.
Isn’t it? That’s what we believe is free will. And if I can’t get it, I don’t have free will. And I’m angry and I want to get it. That is not free will.
That is completely obsessed. We are completely obsessed with that I that wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer. We are completely obsessed with that I and from that obsession we constantly create delusions. Somehow, if we have very good karma, we can find a way that that I gets what it wants. And the more that I gets what it wants, the more we have the feeling we have freedom.
Getting what you want is not freedom. Being free from that obsession that you constantly have to follow what that ‘I’ wants that is real freedom. Having no want at all that is freedom. Being content with whatever comes to your life and feeling free from that. Our I, that’s like an addiction, you know, that obsession of I want.
We are constantly in an addictive behaviour. When we see somebody who is addicted to alcohol, to drugs, whatever, we think, oh my god. We can see completely how that person is powerless in their addiction. No matter what you say, no matter what you try, you cannot reach them. That is how we are, really.
But we look more civilised and we have more of us than we are used to, So we think it’s normal. We think that’s just how we are. Buddhism says would say bullshit but Buddhism doesn’t say That’s not how we really are. That’s not at all how we really are. That’s our state of suffering.
That drive to constantly want to satisfy our needs, our temporary needs is not what we really are. That’s an obsession, that’s an addiction, that’s suffering in itself. Right? So suffering, if you look at suffering, we have very core suffering that we can all recognise, that we all want to be free of. That’s the suffering suffering of suffering.
So the pain of being born, the pain of sickness, the pain of old age. Any pain that we experience in life, we want to be free of that. We all want to be free of that. But Buddhism says actually that drive to find happiness all the time, that is a suffering in itself too. That dissatisfied mind, that no matter how much you do and how hard you try, you get this moment of satisfaction and then the satisfaction is gone.
And you have to follow the drive again to find new satisfaction. That in itself is suffering. It’s in the nature of suffering. But we experience that as happiness. And we feel ‘hey that’s my happiness’ Buddhism says ‘give it up’.
I can’t give up my happiness. So it’s like a package. We are born, in that package of being born is that we’re necessarily going to die. In the package of happiness, the way we do it is necessarily the experience that we’re going to suffer. If you want to remove this suffering, you have to remove this longing for or the longing for this happiness, the drive to constantly find that happiness.
You have to let it go. Remove in the sense of remove your addiction to experience from it, but remove your addiction to it. That’s different, isn’t it? So we’re not giving up our pleasant experiences because we keep on creating positive actions to have these pleasant experiences. But what we give up is that drive.
I need to have happiness today and I follow that and I’ll get at whatever I have to do for that. That is what we have to give up. So why do we have that drive? That drive we have because we have this feeling of I inside us. That very strong or we feel it very strong when we get hurt or when we’re really excited.
Wow, I got the main prize in the lottery. I got it. That eye gets very, very big. Somebody hits you. Oh, I got hit.
How dare he? That eye gets really, really big. When it gets really big we can see it right in front of us. If we analyse that, that feeling that arises, I don’t know, that feeling can be this big, isn’t it? We really feel it’s really there.
But if you look, what is really there? What can find that is really there? What is it? Is it something in the body? No, it’s bigger than the body.
So it cannot be the body. That feeling of I cannot be the body. Is it the mind? If it’s the mind, then that is all of my mind. It can’t be the mind.
If it’s ‘is it my mind?’ the fact that I can say ‘is it my mind?’ it cannot be me. Because otherwise I couldn’t say it’s my mind’. But we feel somehow that we have this person here or this controlling entity or this entity that possesses the body and the mind and is in charge of the body and the mind. And that entity lives in and of itself. Sometimes we feel it as the body, sometimes we feel it as the mind, sometimes we feel it as something separate.
True? But Buddhism says if you’re really going to look what that is, that entity, you cannot find a thing. There is nothing there. That whole feeling that arises, that gives us the feeling of an ‘I’ which is separate from body, mind, somebody else that doesn’t exist. There’s nothing there.
It’s just a feeling that arises. But there’s not a real entity there that we can say that is the I. It’s not there. But on the basis of that feeling we distinguish others. We distinguish I experiences pleasure or I experiences unhappiness.
And on the basis of that experience we generate all these reactions. Every time when we experience pleasure we say I want to have more. Every time when that I that doesn’t exist experiences displeasure, we say I don’t want to have that. So we’re constantly reactive to whatever appears in the mind. From a place that is a complete mental construction but doesn’t really exist.
It is just a mental construction. It doesn’t mean that there is no ‘I’. Because even if I realise that that is a mental construction and I remove that construction from my mind, I still have this body, I’m still sitting here, I’m still doing the same things. I still exist but not as that mental construction. That mental construction is not a real I.
It’s a construction that is the cause for all our suffering. It’s a reactive thing, completely addicted to happiness. So what we are doing is not eliminating the experience of happiness but we eliminate the structure. Which means that we still experience happiness, still have the same experiences but we just don’t have that obsessive behaviour towards it. As long as we have that mental construction, we have the feeling that there is somebody here that can be harmed and we have the feeling that there is somebody here that can be benefited.
Because we have the feeling there is this I, we divide the world into me and others. We have separation. If we really look inside, we all suffer from feeling separated. Isn’t it? We all suffer from feeling loneliness, from lonely.
We all suffer from feeling different. We all suffer from not feeling understood, not feeling heard, not feeling seen. We’re all longing for that connectedness with everybody. We’re all longing for that freedom separation. That feeling of separation is based on the feeling that I am different from others, which is purely a mental construction.
So one of the tools that Buddhism uses is see I am not different from others. We have a very critical mind, I think, in the West. Isn’t that? We see differences. I’m not sure if I said that last week.
But if we see a person with a little bit different color in the skin, that person is other. That person is not like us. Immediately, we see that. Especially in Australia, I would say. But in Europe, it’s still there, you know, even if there are people many people with a different color.
We have that. If you look at Aboriginals and you say Wow, they have a really very interesting philosophy which is very connected or very similar in some ways to Buddhism. An Aboriginal would say As soon as somebody has a little bit of colour, you’re one one of us. They’re not looking for who is different, they’re looking for who is the same. That basic attitude of looking for similarities in somebody else helps you to bridge that separation that we feel.
Helps us to bridge that feeling of me, somebody else and others. What we are looking at is where are we the same? And every time that you think where are we the same? You put out a bridge and you make a connection. If you recognise the similarity you are the same.
You will work for both of you. If you recognise the difference then you have to defend yourself. Because that difference might actually endanger your own feeling of happiness. If you see the similarity, I don’t have to defend myself. Isn’t it because we’re the same?
Why do I have to defend myself? That is a very, very deep attitude. If you meditate only on that, I think you can heal anything you want. If you could meditate on we are the same’ then naturally I want you to be happy, naturally I want you to be free of suffering. No matter who you are.
Even if you harm me, if I can see that you’re the same as me, I still want you to be happy, still want you to be free of suffering. That in itself is a loving and compassionate attitude. That love and compassion are the tools to heal yourself. That is what we are suffering from, that separation. That me, me, me.
And our whole society is based on creating more me, me, me. You have to be proud of yourself. You have to defend yourself. The competition that we have in society, which is constantly based on how can I be better than that person, how can I be smarter than that person, is all about separation? It’s all about following that I with all its addictions with that it has with it.
True? So it’s not easy to practice this in this society because if you’re going to practice it, people say, You are crazy. Why would you give up your own happiness? Right? So you need a lot of wisdom in order to really do this.
But if you think about it, it’s logic and you can feel it. Oh, wouldn’t the world be much easier if I could see the similarities? If I could see we are the same? Then he said let’s go and have a coffee. But then he’d say he’s different.
Did you see him? There is a separation with everything that comes with it. If we feel that separation, delusions come up. All delusions. And we went through delusions the last two weeks.
All your anger, all your jealousy, all your pride just gets triggered and triggered and triggered. He is different. That means I have a reason to get angry at him when he doesn’t do what I want and make sure that if he’s doing a little bit what I want that I please him. Isn’t it? If I see that he’s different and he gets a bigger car than me, I have to make sure that I’m going get a bigger car.
Or my jealousy comes up. Or my you know, it’s like all the delusions get triggered because of that separation, because of that me. So even if you take if that’s the only thing that you take with you from this course, every time when you meet somebody think where are you the same as I am? You are the same as I. Where is that?
Where can I see that? If I can see it, my whole reason, my whole cause of suffering is taken away by that is how to say sabotaged at that moment. Easy, isn’t it? In a way, it’s easy, isn’t it? One thing.
You are similar than I. Let me see. So, you asked about the guilt last week. Guilt is coming from the same thing. Guilt is saying, I am different.
You’re not saying You are different. You’re saying I’m different. I must be wrong. I must not do this right. I’m not doing that right.
I’m not doing that right because I don’t please that person. Guilt is feeling that you always want to please. Is that true? So if you want to please somebody why do you want to please that other person? Would say guilt if we talk about that separation and that separation is the cause of our unhappiness and our pain then normally what we do is we want to make that I happy and free from suffering and that we don’t care too much about the others.
But there is also a way of and maybe that is the Christianity that says you have to take care of others, have to take care of others, but it doesn’t address the separation. So when you are really trained in I have to take care of others, have to take care of others, because if they are happy, they take care of me then you still have that separation in exactly the same way. Isn’t it? It’s just that your focus is on the other people to be happy and to be free of suffering and you don’t care too much what happens to you. So your caring is for the others instead of for you.
But in essence, it’s exactly the same mind. Where there is a division between me and others and where there is a difference between me and others. Because of that separation, you learn that if you are looking for your happiness, you make them suffer. That is what we learn. If you start to look for your own happiness, you will hear these people saying, well, you changed.
I don’t recognise you anymore and I’m not sure if I like this.’ That’s what they’re going to say and you think, ‘They’re not like me. They don’t like me anymore. If they don’t like me anymore they’re not going to take care of me. So I have to make sure that they like me. I have to make sure that I make them happy and live in the court with what they want.
And what you’re doing is you disconnect from what you need. Somehow it must have had a function somewhere to feed your needs otherwise you would not be able to sustain that. So then there are different levels of need. One is the need that when we come into this world we need food. We need love from our parents.
Parents can be very cruel in that. Not out of maliciousness or something but ignorance. If you don’t know what I want, I’m not going to be kind to you. We get that message, isn’t it, from when we are very, very tiny. We learn to please the other because when we please the other, you get another spoon of food.
Or when you please the other, you get a laugh that you need or you get the attention you need. If you have been trained from very tiny, then it’s very difficult that if you feel that your feeling of happiness is not going to feed into their happiness to make the decision to do it because there’s always a threat that you’re not going get your basics. First there is this deep need. So, you have to connect with that very deep need. What is it that you need from the others that keeps that guilt happening?
That gives that guilt space to constantly arise in the mind? That’s what you first have to identify. And then you’re going to see: So when I’m looking for happiness, I do something that they say hurts them. But does that really hurt what I’m doing? Sometimes it’s that they don’t get that little bit of pleasure that they think has to come from you, you know.
But if you know by the mind that pleasure can come from them, it has nothing to do with you. Pleasure comes from their causes and conditions, not from you. If they create the right causes and conditions, pleasure will arise naturally in their mind without me being there, without me doing that, without me having that responsibility. They have the responsibility for that. You have the responsibility for your happiness.
And just as you want to take care of yourself, they want to take care of themselves. So you say, That’s okay. You can take care of yourself and I take care of myself. And then you’re going to do it in your wise way. Feeling guilty means that you take care of their happiness more than your own happiness.
True? Normally, good selfish man. There are people in the world that you recognize, that take very easily care of their own happiness but not of others’. Guilt is the opposite. But both are coming from that separation between me and others.
Both somehow lack the wisdom that my happiness is completely connected to the happiness of others. For you, if you have guilt, I would say you have to think selfish and focus on what makes me happy and how can I do that so that it’s of benefit to others? But you have to start with what makes me happy. Somebody is completely indulged with their own happiness and can take really good care of that. You might say: You check what will be good for everybody else and see if you could do that.
But if you have a lot of guilt, you have to look at what is going to make me happy and how can I do that so that it can be of benefit to others? So don’t say I’m only going to make me happy and I don’t care about others because then you generate the opposite thing which is going to cost you in the long run just as much suffering. It’s not really different, it’s just a change of object. You have to sit with that. Guilt is saying I’m not worth it to be taken care of.
Guilt is I’m not good enough I’m not worth it that I listen to my own needs of being happy, of wanting to be free of suffering. You are just a human being and everybody else. And just as you work very hard to create freedom from suffering for others, so can you work for yourself to be free of suffering. But somewhere there is a feeling that I’m not good enough to even look at that. That I’m not good enough is a very destructive message.
It’s an aggression towards yourself, isn’t it? I’m not good enough. Creating loving-kindness towards yourself. I am what I am. We cannot change what we are.
This is all we have. You’re one of God’s children. We’re all the same in that we are all good enough. We are not different than we are. How can we say you’re good enough but you’re not good enough?
Tell me, what’s hard? We all find it difficult, so tell me what happens. See if we can make it more clear. Well, it’s really hard to say no and look after yourself. Say no to others?
Yes. So you feel that looking after comes with saying no to others? Not all the time. Not all Not always. No, just sometimes you yeah, I have trouble saying no anytime.
I think as women, we are raised in the we to think that we have to sacrifice ourselves for other people. Yeah. We’re meant to be the perfect mother, the perfect worker, But nobody tells us that notion of proper selfishness. I think that if you start with you, then you’re happy. All those other things fall into place.
So you you It’s very similar than Buddhism. You sacrifice yourself for the happiness of others. But with a lack of wisdom of what a self really is and how you do that skillfully, it becomes the source of big suffering. Isn’t it? So it’s like we have to step back a little bit and think about what does it really mean if you sacrifice yourself?
What I hear now with Buddhists is: Yes, sacrificing yourself is realising the emptiness of self. You sacrifice it in the sense that you realise it doesn’t even exist. If you really realise it, it’s not there so you know there is nothing to take care of. If you really feel there is nothing to take care of, you don’t have to take care of it. You can’t take care of others.
So then you sacrifice yourself to take care of others. But what we do, we have that strong feeling and we think I’m not going to listen to that feeling. And although that feeling is screaming, I’m not going to listen to it. That’s not proper sacrificing. Right?
Because there is an I just as hard screaming as all the others and we have to listen to all of them. If you realise that this is not really there, that screaming is not there. So if there is no screaming, there is a natural sacrifice. But as long as that I is screaming, we have to listen to that. Right?
Then we have to acknowledge I’m not there yet. I can’t give it up yet. That’s okay. Listen to it. Yes, you have to take care of the needs but I think if you listen, that’s a very, very big thing.
Listen and acknowledge: I have that need. And if you really feel that that need is really important, then maybe also trust that fulfilling that need is not necessarily harming others. Listen. Sometimes you can’t give something to somebody but that’s not harming. Sometimes you can’t give your care but that doesn’t mean you harm that person, does it?
You are not harming. You are not killing. You are not stealing. You are not doing any of that. You just abstain from something that a person is really used to, really likes, thinks needs.
You withdraw that. But you’re not harming. But we feel that, isn’t it? We feel that if we can’t give that attention to this person as we did before, we harm that person. Maybe that’s not true.
I think that’s very heat thinking. Maybe that’s not true. I’m not sure, you know, but you have to think about that. Yeah. Maybe it’s not true.
I have to learn the same thing. Know that when I was still in a relationship, my partner would say, I always have to give up things. I always was the only him, him, him, him. I always have to give up. And I started to say, hey, but what about me?
And I want to do this and I want to do the practice and I want to do and he would say, and I always have to give up things and you only get things. But I realised that is how far I didn’t take care of myself. Only was there for him and completely sacrificed but not in the right way. He thought he was giving up constantly. But actually, he had something that wasn’t his.
You know? He had to take care of that himself and he didn’t wanna do that. So, yes, fantastic. You tap into somebody who gives it to you. If you would say no, you know, it’s like it’s also your responsibility to take care of things in you, you actually empower people too.
It’s not that you just take something away, you empower them to learn to do something. True? But that can be difficult. And I think the more wisdom you can generate, the more you can really make that clear to others in a soft way and in a nice way and in a loving way. It’s not that you take away your love.
Isn’t it? You stay loving in the same way. We are all very needy people and we hang into each other. Their need is also coming from that I that is really, really strong and is hooking to fulfil the needs. That neediness in itself is not a healthy thing.
It’s not the basis of happiness. True? You have to think about it. Let’s have a coffee, tea. I think we almost did.
Is that all we did? Oh, I didn’t. I should say a little more about how we stop. Stop creating negativities, step back, stop engaging and then try to do the opposite. That’s actually all.
After the break, I wanna know if you know everything that you need to know, if you have a little bit of tools in your bag that it can help you through summer. And then